“Then must Obligato go, for he hath such credentials,” said the fool, blowing thistledown in the air. “Yesterday was no Palm Sunday to Leicester. Delicio’s head was high. ‘Imperial Majesty,’ quoth Obligato, his knees upon the rushes, ‘take my life, but send me not forth into darkness where I shall see my Queen no more. By the light of my Queen’s eyes have I walked, and pains of hell are my Queen’s displeasure.’ ‘Methinks thy humbleness is tardy,’ quoth Delicio. ‘No cock shall crow by my nest,’ said she. ‘And, by the mantle of Elijah, I am out with sour faces and men of phlegm and rheum. I will be gay once more. So get thee gone to Kenilworth, and stray not from it on thy peril. Take thy malaise with thee, and I shall laugh again.’ And he goeth. So that was the end of Obligato, and now cometh another tune.”
“She hath good cheer?” asked Lemprière, eagerly.
“I have never seen Delicio smile these seven years as she smiled to-day; and when she kissed Amicitia I sent for my confessor and made my will. Delicio hath come to spring-time, and the voice of the turtle is in her ear.”
“Amicitia—and who is Amicitia?” asked Lemprière, well flushed with wine.
“She who hath brought Obligato to the diminuendo and finale,” answered the fool; “even she who hath befriended the Huguenottine of the black eyes.”
“Ah, she, the Duke’s Daughter—ah, that is a flower of a lady! Did she not say that my jerkin fitted featly when I did act as butler to her adorable Majesty three months syne? She hath no mate in the world save Mademoiselle Aubert, whom I brought hither to honor and to fame.”
“To honor and fame, was it—but by the hill of desperandum, Nuncio,” said the fool, prodding him with his stick of bells.
“‘Desperandum!’ I know not Latin, it amazes me,” said Lemprière, waving a lofty hand.
“She—the Huguenottine—was a-mazed, also, and from the maze was played by Obligato.”
“How so! how so!” cried the seigneur, catching at his meaning. “Did Leicester waylay and siege? ’Sblood, had I known this I’d have broached him and swallowed him even on crutches!”